A projected deficit of more than Pounds 2.6 million at Birkbeck College could signal the abandonment of laboratory-based science and a wave of redundancies, it was claimed this week.
The college's five-year forecast maps finances plummeting from a Pounds 1.198 million surplus in 1994/95 to a Pounds 1.12 million deficit in 1997/98, with a deficit in the year 2000 of Pounds 2.68 million. A Coopers & Lybrand interim report has already led to four non-academic compulsory redundancies.
A strategic working party appointed by the governors to consider the college's academic and financial future recommended closing the physics department. The department, which scored two in the last Research Assessment Exercise, has a direct cost deficit of Pounds 80,000.
The prospect of redundancy now hangs over the department's eight academics, and seven technicians plus part-time secretaries and research assistants. The physicists fear closure of their department could create a domino effect for all laboratory-based science.
Senior physics lecturer Malcolm Coupland said: "The working party has really taken an extremely shallow look at the financial situation. And the other science departments are very concerned that there will be a rapid domino effect. The indirect costs of the physics department such as laboratory space will have to be borne by other science departments and they're already suffering from cuts. There is a feeling, whether by accident or design, that the college is heading for no serious laboratory science."
The college has stressed that "no decision will be taken on these proposals before the governors meeting on March 20 1997".
A college statement said: "It is with much regret that Birkbeck College has had to start considering such measures, but unfortunately, in the current funding climate, it is the only way Birkbeck will be able to avoid a deficit and continue to offer high quality courses for part-time students."
Birkbeck's centre for extramural studies is to be the subject of a separate working party examination.
The compulsory redundancy notices issued last week affect four administrators in the resource centre. The move sparked immediate protests by the Association of University Teachers which fears that more could follow.
AUT branch president Michael Harris said: "The college seems to be attempting to cope with a projected deficit but we fear that once you start restructuring then you remove the prime assets who are the members of staff."
A Birkbeck spokeswoman said that the college had followed agreed procedures for redundancies, consulting staff and the AUT at the earliest opportunity.
Richard Taylor, secretary of the Universities Association for Continuing Education, said closing the physics department would be "catastrophic". "Birkbeck is of pivotal importance to part-time adult learning and continuing education," he said. "It is ironic that Birkbeck could contemplate abandoning mainstream science when the Government has stressed the importance of the sciences."